Your Turn: Aug. 9

Updated
4:16 pm CDT, Monday, August 8, 2016

During a briefing on the San Antonio Comprehensive Plan before the City Council, Alamo Group of the Sierra Club member Meredith McGuire protests with a sign reading: “Planning Commission Impervious to Citizens.” A reader argues that economic output should be about people, not just development. less

During a briefing on the San Antonio Comprehensive Plan before the City Council, Alamo Group of the Sierra Club member Meredith McGuire protests with a sign reading: “Planning Commission Impervious to ... more

Photo: Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

Photo: Jerry Lara /San Antonio Express-News

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During a briefing on the San Antonio Comprehensive Plan before the City Council, Alamo Group of the Sierra Club member Meredith McGuire protests with a sign reading: “Planning Commission Impervious to Citizens.” A reader argues that economic output should be about people, not just development. less

During a briefing on the San Antonio Comprehensive Plan before the City Council, Alamo Group of the Sierra Club member Meredith McGuire protests with a sign reading: “Planning Commission Impervious to ... more

Mr. Pimentel posits that Republicans are agonizing over whether the final line has been crossed that warrants abandoning Donald Trump. As an independent, with Democrats as friends, I would add that many non-Republicans are battling the same issue. As has been said many, many times already this election season, there’s not much to choose from for president from either major party.

To be fair, we would like to see Mr. Pimentel author a similar column on Hillary Clinton. This is a serious request. There is plenty of material to work with, as there was with Trump.

I don’t know if experiencing Barack Obama as president for the last 7½ years has simply lowered the bar to the point that no self-respecting American wants to run for office. But our country is in a serious dilemma with seemingly no way out.

Brian Chasnoff wrote, “(Bernie) Sanders repeated on Wednesday that the top 1 percent earns 85 percent of income, although that claim is outdated; in the past two years, it fell to 52 percent, according to Politifact.”

That claim is actually for the share of growth in income since 2009, not total income at any one point in time. This makes a big difference.

Politifact gets its information on this from a report by the Economic Policy Institute. It says (right in the first full paragraph) that “the top 1 percent captured 85.1 percent of total income growth between 2009 and 2013” (and that share has now fallen to 52 percent).

Notice it says income growth, not income. What it discusses is the share of “new” income going to the top 1 percent. They mean the share of income growth.

When the Census Bureau reports on incomes every year, usually the top 20 percent of households have 50 to 55 percent of the income. So the top 1 percent would have much less than that in total income share. Onpage 9, it shows that the top quintile in 2014 had 51.4 percent of all income.

First Bill Clinton meets with the attorney general for a half-hour on her plane and wants us to believe that conversation was about their grandchildren. Sure.

Then a Supreme Court justice gets on TV, attacks the Republican candidate and says she will not excuse herself if there are any disputed election outcomes. Sure.

Then the HUD secretary violates the Hatch Act. Then the chairman of the DNC leads a sabotage of Bernie Sanders to rig the nomination. Sure.

And now they blame Russian spies for hacking their emails. Sure, kill the messenger.

These folks are all graduates of prominent law schools. Several are even law professors. What insane stuff are they teaching by doing these unethical acts? And Julián Castro, the HUD secretary, does not know of the federal Hatch Act limits? Unbelievable!

And, as always, the Clintons plead ignorance and blame others for their actions. Remember “I did not have sex with that woman”? They haven’t changed.

According to Mr. Farrimond, we are just devastating the San Antonio’s labor force by having regulations forced onto the innocent, development sector. It creates all these jobs and everyone gets a cut. It’s win-win!

Clean air and available water are valuable resources that, once lost, cannot be regained easily. Developers seem compelled to pave and build over every square bit of land until there is no more. Poor planning, in pursuit of short-term profit, has decimated cities facing challenges from climate change and denser populations. If added cost is the only way to force developers to slow down and consider long-term consequences, so be it.

Traffic, infrastructure and city services are considerations conveniently missing from this commentary. Another thing missing is his optimistic assumption of great incomes in San Antonio. Texas still maintains a poverty-level minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, and nearly half of Texans have no access to affordable health care because of the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid. So we have a poorer, sicker population, and no amount of development will change that.

There is more to economic output than development. Slanted arguments to benefit a small slice of industry, while many are mired in working poverty without health care, is a blatant lobby for a higher profit margin. As for me, more unaffordable housing for the many is not worth losing irreplaceable land, water and air resources.